


Let's keep going

by BrilliantlyHorrid



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: But not explicit, Coulson Daisy and Lola, CousyFest 2k17, F/M, Guess the movie reference, Implied character death(s), In the framework
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-31
Updated: 2017-03-31
Packaged: 2018-10-13 08:37:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,225
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10510185
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BrilliantlyHorrid/pseuds/BrilliantlyHorrid
Summary: “I won’t ask you to come with me,” she said quickly. “If you get out now, say I kidnapped you, they might not hurt you. I just don’t know if I’ll--” She broke off, frustrated. Things here were too confusing, too complicated.Coulson stared at her incredulously. “Daisy I’m not leaving you."“You’re not serious,” Daisy said, turning in her seat. There was shock on her face, but also something else. Hope, maybe, a little anger. Here she was, giving him an out, and he was throwing it away.“I am. If you want to go, I’m going to be right here with you.”CousyFest Day 5: "Lola in the Framework"





	

**Author's Note:**

> Built on an idea I liked but didn't know what to do with, then they went to the Framework and helped, haha.

They were surrounded. Well, partially surrounded. A fleet of Hydra SUVs and even a hovering helicopter prevented their escape on one side, the Grand Canyon on the other.

“You know, I always wanted to see this place,” Coulson told Daisy, and she paused her incessant nervous tapping on the steering wheel to stare at him.

“You’ve never been?”

“No, I have,” he admitted, and Daisy looked away before he could see the eminent eye roll. _Just not this me._

Someone called out over a megaphone, repeating orders to turn the engine off and put their hands in the air. Surrender.

 _Not a chance._ There were literally no other options, but that was still somehow the worst one. They could die here, feel pain, and after their escape both were probably a certainty.

It wasn’t an option.

Beneath them Lola’s reliable purr was unusually labored, stalling for a moment, and he thought that was it. She had taken a lot of damage the day before, all without the extra modifications the real Lola had.

He pictured their team, what was left. Scattered, barely themselves, doing things they would never normally be capable of. (He himself wasn’t exempt from that.) Not everyone was so tempted by the possibility of escape, and hadn’t exactly taken kindly to the offer. _We’ll figure it out later,_ he told himself, before realizing that wasn’t really true.

They couldn’t force them to leave if they didn’t want to, but at this point he wasn’t even sure if they could.

“Coulson,” Daisy called, catching his attention. She looked exhausted, covered in dust, and he guessed he looked the same. “I’m tired.”

Coulson nodded. “Me too.”

Daisy got a frustrated look on her face. “No, I mean I’m tired of this. Of running away. Hoping they’ll eventually listen, that things will change.” She looked over his face, like she was searching for something there. “They won’t, will they? This is...the world right now.”

Hopelessness wasn’t in Phil’s nature, nor was it in Daisy’s. But here they were. Would things change? Maybe, one day. But not with Daisy locked up or worse. Not with dissenting parties too afraid to stand up.

So what was she saying?

“What do you want to do?” Phil asked, as quietly as possible over the roar of the helicopter looming behind them.

“I can’t do any good with Hydra hunting me down, and I can’t let them catch me,” Daisy said, and her gaze moved to the front of them, the (seemingly) endless expanse of sky.

“Daisy--”

“I won’t ask you to come with me,” she said quickly, and it was occurring to Phil that she _meant it_. Not that Daisy was the half-measures type. But this… “If you get out now, say I kidnapped you, they might not hurt you. I just don’t know if I’ll--” She broke off, frustrated. Things here were too confusing, too complicated.

Coulson stared at her incredulously. “Daisy I’m not _leaving_ you,” he said, realizing it was true as he said it. It was strange, how he was able to make such a drastic decision without really considering it first. But it was the right one, he knew it.

“You’re not serious,” Daisy said, turning in her seat. There was shock on her face, but also something else. Hope, maybe, a little anger. Here she was, giving him an out, and he was throwing it away.

“I am. If you want to go, I’m going to be right here with you.”

Where she was planning to ‘go,’ he wasn’t quite sure. They’d discussed possibilities in hushed tones, hiding out in crappy hotel rooms or anonymous booths in roadside diners.

 _“If we die here, we die out there,_ ” Daisy had repeated for the hundredth time or so. Coulson just nodded, still playing catch up with everything that was going on. Still coming to grips with how long it had taken him to realize that the woman loitering in his driveway with the stolen corvette, simply _waiting_ for him to remember her, was the one person he was convinced he would never forget. _“But_ she _doesn’t want us to die,_ ” Daisy had muttered, stabbing at a piece of pie with her fork.

 _“At this point, I wouldn’t count on that,”_ Coulson had told her, having seen too much to believe protection was the first thing on Aida’s incomprehensible mind. Daisy just shrugged, dropping the point.

Now her eyes stared at that fake horizon, her hand lightly tapping the wheel. Was _that_ what she was counting on? _We can’t fly here._

A million thoughts were going through his head. He should be stopping her, right? But he’d never been able to do that. And what was he asking her to do instead? Submit herself to experiments, being used as a weapon and helping them do the same to others?

“Coulson, there’s no guarantee this will work,” she told him, demanding with her stare that he meet her eyes. If he looked away, she’d know he was having second thoughts, so he simply stared back.

Something she saw there must have startled her, because Daisy was the one who looked away, and whether it was the dust or the wind whipping around them or whatever she saw in his face, her eyes had begun to water.

 _We’re doing this_. Phil thought, oddly, morbidly giddy about what was about to happen. But there was so much he had to do, to say.

“Daisy,” he said, and she looked back at him, probably wondering if (hoping?) he had changed his mind. Phil reached over the console and pulled her in closer, curling his fingers in the sweaty, freshly cropped hair at the nape of her neck as he kissed her. It tasted like dust and sweat and their lives over the past few days; somehow both urgent and comfortable. It tasted _real._

If only Hydra hadn’t caught them, he’d be content to run away with her even longer. That realization had startled him the first time, as they attempted to get some sleep off the side of the road, looking up at the stars from Lola’s non-reclining seats. Daisy had stretched her arms over the back and somehow he ended up with his head pillowed on her shoulder. Normally one of them would have made a joke, he thought.

(The realization that he wanted to kiss Daisy like this, that maybe was nothing new either, and maybe it wasn’t even real. After all, what had his first thought been when this woman showed up at his doorstep? Was that him or just who he was here? He didn’t have as much time to think about it.)

And now it was going to be taken away from them, or they could _keep going_.

Pulling away, Phil smiled apologetically at Daisy. “Sorry, if I didn’t do that now…”

She nodded, looking at his mouth thoughtfully. After a moment, she lifted her hand, holding it out to him. “Ready?”

Phil nodded, clasping her hand in his.

Daisy pressed the gas.

***

“Knock knock,” Daisy called, then winced. The greeting was a little cheesy, all things considered. But Coulson smiled slightly, waving her in. Maybe he needed cheesy.

“Everything still seems to be intact,” he said, but the words hung in the air a little too long, and they both shared a look.

“Your office is in good shape, that’s good,” Daisy observed. The explosions hadn’t reached here, the resulting fire getting close, but not close enough.

Coulson shook his head. “Not my office.”

Daisy twisted her fingers in her sleeves. “Coulson--”

“I didn’t mean-- it’s yours. If you want it.”

That was...not what she was expecting.

“I think now might not be the best time to make that decision,” she said slowly, and while a second meaning wasn’t her intention, she felt like maybe they both could hear one.

Sitting at the desk, Coulson sighed. “Why not? SHIELD is in crisis, I think you’ve proven you’re the best one to handle that kind of situation. Many times over, recently.” He was smiling but his face was kind of twisted up, like he was admonishing himself.

“Can we just...work together on this one? For now?” She asked. Not totally balking at the idea of leadership, but not wanting to be alone in this. And if he was planning on handing this over so he could leave… “I just can’t handle this on my own.”

Coulson looked up at her, confused. “I’ll be here,” he told Daisy, then more firmly as her fears seemed to sink in: “I’m not going anywhere.”

She nodded, relieved, sitting on the edge of the desk and taking in the scene around them.

“Where do we even begin?” Daisy asked, and Coulson turned on the monitor and made a little helpless motion with his hand.

He looked tired, cleaned up (after all, this Coulson hadn’t been in the scuffles other Coulson had,) but exhausted. Did he remember all of it? But the time they were able to find the rest of the group, they had been hooked up to the framework much longer than Daisy and Simmons had. If her body was fatigued, her mind jumbled, she wondered about theirs.

A life full of memories, suddenly plugged into their brains. How could they even stand that? She didn’t ask, for fear of dragging up painful losses, both real and not real. She was herself the whole time and there were still moments that made her confused, what was it like to be an entirely different person, to come to terms with the fact that decades of a life were not only a lie, but happened over the course of just a couple days?

“Let’s just start by seeing what we have here, then go from there,” Coulson said softly, snapping her out of it. His voice brought her back to that surreal moment. Not the one where she kept driving until there was no more ground beneath them, or when the world (and Lola) dissolved around them and restarted, _protecting them_ , in a weird way. But the taste of dust and dirt in her mouth, the feeling of his dry lips against hers as a helicopter hovered overhead making the world around them gritty and hazy.

In the same moment it was completely unimaginable and the most _real_ thing she’d ever felt.

But how could she ask him about that? With everything he’d been through, and had been forced to give up?

“Daisy,” Coulson called again, placing a hand on her arm. “Let’s see what we have here, then go from there,” he repeated, tired but with intent. Like he was saying something she wasn’t supposed to miss.

“What _we_ have,” she repeated, looking at his hand on her arm. “ _We_ being...SHIELD.”

He looked at her for a few seconds then actually _shrugged_ , which surprised a smile out of her. He smiled too, squeezing her arm lightly.

But there was a lot of work to do before they got to that point.

“I’m sorry, about what you had to give up.” She said clumsily. Coulson looked away, but kept that point of contact.

“It wasn’t real,” he said, unconvincingly. They both knew now how thin the line was between real and not real these days.

Putting her hand over his, Daisy gave it a comforting squeeze. “Well, this is.” Coulson kind of stared pointedly at the hand (his left... _shit,_ ) and Daisy winced. “I mean, you know what I mean. Me, _this_ is real. If you like, want it to be. Which I think you might considering you, you know, kissed me.”

“Then let you drive me into the grand canyon,” Coulson finished. “Yeah I thought that might be an indicator.”

Someone down the hall called out, probably a member of the construction crew, and the two of them flinched. “Probably going to be jumpy for a while, huh?” Daisy asked, and Coulson nodded, his eyes moving to her shoulder.

“Yeah,” he agreed.

Daisy sighed, hopping off of the desk and moving to his side. All of this ‘how do we know this is real,’ and ‘how do I know someone isn’t a robot’ stuff was too much. “I need a break,” she said, holding out a hand. “Do you want to get out of here for a bit, drive around in Lola?” He looked uncertain. “I promise you, no one is going to miss us for a couple hours, they all have their own...stuff happening. And it'll be nice, to drive her again. For real.”

Still skeptical, Coulson looked from her hand to her face. “That  _would_ be nice, going on a real drive,” he said, and Daisy wasn’t sure if he was actually talking about the driving or… “But do you promise not to drive me off of a cliff this time?” He was smirking slightly, and Daisy rolled her eyes.

“No guarantees,” she said, raising an eyebrow as he grabbed her hand and let her pull him up. “Besides, this time we can fly, remember?”

“You’re right,” Coulson said, grabbing his jacket as they headed out the door, the sounds of the Playground being slowly rebuilt all around them. “I think I’ll definitely like trying this again for  _real_  more.”

Okay, Daisy was pretty certain now he wasn’t _just_ talking about a drive.


End file.
